Video gaming is a tremendously lucrative and competitive industry around the world. Video-game designers are constantly trying to develop new games, new gaming systems, and new gaming concepts. The Nintendo Wii is but one example of a new video-gaming concept that has been successfully introduced and it is changing the way in which video games are used and developed.
A major reason for the success of video gaming is the ability and tendency of humans to fantasize. It can begin very early in childhood, as young children play with dolls or action figures. As they get older and begin playing sports, children playing backyard whiffle ball fantasize about coming to bat with the bases loaded in the ninth inning of game 7 of the World Series, or imagine themselves walking up the 18th fairway at Augusta as they play a round of golf or even miniature golf at a local venue. Video games bring this penchant for fantasy to a new level, allowing gamers to select teams based on actual sports players and then play the games by controlling the “virtual players” to make them perform on the virtual playing field.
While present video games allow the game player to mimic the look and feel of participating in a sporting event, the virtual competitors that they are playing against are computer-generated and the performances of their virtual competitors are computer-generated as well. Unlike reality, in the video game, a virtual Tiger Woods never has a bad round, and there is no connection between the performance of the virtual Tiger Woods and the performance of the actual Tiger Woods on any given day in any given event. To simulate a sporting event in a video game in a more realistic manner, it would be desirable to have a video game system and method whereby a video game player could play against competitors based on the performance of the competitors in an actual event, and preferable one that is occurring essentially simultaneously with the game play.